Let’s admit it: Indie directors often like putting their characters under duress. Granted, it’s called drama. But just the same, sometimes it teeters on too darn much.

Though it’s hard to take to task young movie directors for being ambitious.

Take Eva Aridjis’ debut feature, “The Favor,” which opens today exclusively at Neighborhood Flix on Colfax. In it, a freak accident leaves a virtual stranger taking guardianship of a shut-down teen, the son of his high-school sweetheart. The disasters don’t quite end there.

Set in Bayonne, N.J., “The Favor” begins with teens Lawrence and Caroline sweetly agreeing to lose their virginity. Before they proceed, Lawrence becomes slightly sulky. What will happen once Caroline leaves for college?

When next we see Lawrence, it’s clear what he feared came to pass. Caroline moved and moved on.

Now years later, she’s returned to tend an ailing father. She’s lovely still (Paige Turco’s brief turn creates a mild hankering). She’s divorced with a disaffected 16-year-old, Johnny.

Lawrence has a hairline resembling a tonsure. And the kind soul seems to have lived like a monk. He never married. He works as a pet photographer and as a clerk and mug-shot shooter at the police station. Terrier Lucy is his family.

Caroline calls for a date. Hushed promise hangs in the space between them.

Then a startling accident leaves Johnny alone. (His grandfather is sent to a nursing home.) Lawrence does the improbable but decent thing and signs on to be the lost boy’s foster parent.

Just when we find him infuriating, Aridjis cuts from Lawrence withstanding a barrage of teen fury to him talking a hysterical caller through an emergency.

Maybe Lawrence’s passivity isn’t merely that but also a talent for crises. He’ll need skills.

Ryan Donowho makes scary the tightrope Johnny walks. His surest gift is in making the wrong decision (like dealing weed), often after inching toward something positive.

He accept Lawrence’s largess, then abuses him with moodiness. He falls for the smart Mariana (Isidra Vega), only to send her confounding signals, like beating up her friend. He was angry long before he was orphaned. His drug- dealing father left the family ages ago.

Johnny’s only pleasure seems to come from strumming his bass and sucking on cigs. Seldom has smoking seemed so uncool, a defense and a retreat.

Donowho’s lanky, taciturn presence suggests a character out of Gus Van Sant’s recent ouvre. As in works like “Paranoid Park,” this film travels toward resolution. Wood’s and Donowho’s performances really make it matter what that will be.

Before making this feature, Aridjas had achieved success with documentary. “Children of the Streets,” made while she was a student an New York University, was nominated for two Arieles (Mexico’s equivalent to Oscar).

Readers who attend film festivals will recognize something familiar in “The Favor.” It is a flawed but intriguing film that promises better things to come from its filmmaker.

Ben Platt, who more than three years ago spoke the words and sang the music of “Dear Evan Hansen” for the first time, going on to win the Tony Award in June for best actor in a musical, will leave the celebrated musical in the fall, the show’s producers announced Monday.